Amazon Finds a Home in the UK
January 10, 2020
Just a quick item about Amazon Web Service contract size. “Home Office Reinforces Commitment to AWS with £100m Cloud Hosting Deal” makes clear that a UK government entity has not been won over my Microsoft Azure. The write up reports this information:
“The award of the public cloud hosting services contract to Amazon is a continuation of services already provided to the Home Office,” a departmental spokesperson told Computer Weekly. “The contract award provides significant savings for the department of a four-year term.” The Home Office is renowned for being a heavy user of cloud technologies, and is – according to the government’s own Digital Marketplace IT spending league table – by far the biggest buyer of off-premise services and technologies via the G-Cloud procurement framework.
The contract is significant because it suggests that other Five Eyes’ participants will be exposed to the AWS approach.
For Amazon staff working on the contract, there may be some meetings at Clarendon Terrance. London taxi drivers know where that is. No digital map needed.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2020
Is Open Source Changing and Rapidly?
January 7, 2020
Open source technology is what some perceive as unencumbered, handcuff free code. For outfits eager to slash costs, open source software is a foot stool for some developers and organizations. One interpretation of open source operates on the premise that the technology should be free and available for anyone. The social contract is that users “give back” to the open source community.
Some Amazon Web Services’ critics appear to suggest that the company is not giving back. Not surprisingly, some AWS-ers are not happy campers. ZDNet shares more on the story in the article, “AWS Hits Back At Open-Source Software Critics.”
Also, the deeply technical New York Times was not kind to AWS, when it stated that AWS, a giant cloud computing provider, consistently integrated open source software that non-AWS developers created. Vice President of AWS analytics and ElasticCache Andi Gutman claims that AWS is giving its customers what they want. Gutman says that Was customers want technology and services based off open source technology, so AWS is not strip mining, but truly answering their clients’ desires. He continued:
“The story is largely talking about open source software projects and companies who’ve tried to build businesses around commercializing that open-source software. These open-source projects enable any company to utilize this software on-premises or in the cloud, and build services around it. AWS customers have repeatedly asked AWS to build managed services around open source,” Gutman said.
He noted that AWS contributes to open-source projects such as Linux, Java, Kubernetes, Xen, KVM, Chromium, Robot Operating System, Apache Lucene, Redis, s2n, FreeRTOS and Elasticsearch.”
The complaints apparently come from AWS’s rivals, who have also discussed filing antitrust complaints against the company. One rival CEO, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, is afraid Amazon’s ambitions are endless and might overpower or monopolize the entire cloud computing market.
Will open source return to its roots? Will some open source developers not permit big companies to privatize the community technology?
Which will triumph? Open source precepts or the needs of a publicly-traded company?
Elastic, the developers of open source Elastic, the write up “Why Elastic Stock Dropped 19% in December” may presage the impact of efforts to change the definition of open source.
Whitney Grace, January 7, 2020
Oracle, Amazon, and Maybe Soon Open Source Excitement?
January 6, 2020
Remember the on going Google-Oracle Java dust up? Oracle may. According to “Oracle Copied Amazon’s API. Was That Copyright Infringement?”:
Among the companies offering a copy of Amazon’s S3 API is Oracle itself. In order to be compatible with S3, Oracle’s “Amazon S3 Compatibility API” copies numerous elements of Amazon’s API, down to the x-amz tags. Did Oracle infringe Amazon’s copyright here? Ars Technica contacted Oracle to ask them if they had a license to copy Amazon’s S3 API. An Oracle spokeswoman said that the S3 API was licensed under an Apache 2.0 license. She pointed us to the Amazon SDK for Java, which does indeed come with an Apache 2.0 license. However, the Amazon SDK is code that uses the S3 API, not code that implements it—the difference between a customer who orders hash browns and the Waffle House cook who interprets the orders.
DarkCyber thinks the author is saying, “Yep, we copied.”
But… and this is interesting.
the Amazon SDK is code that uses the S3 API, not code that implements it.
Is this going to have an impact on API use? A court may decide.
In the meantime, let’s approach this from a different angle.
What’s the future of software? In DarkCyber’s opinion the future of software is a mix of open source code with proprietary components. DarkCyber doesn’t have a nifty Waffle House analogy for this trajectory.
The idea is that the technical constructs we know and love as FANG for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google want to reduce costs, create a glide path for young open sourcey developers, and lock in big spending customers.
One way to think about the Oracle copying Amazon move is in the context of the 2020 version of proprietary software. The APIs and the need for lock in are essential to the persistence of certain big companies.
Net net: What looks open is not? What looks like wordsmithing is a prelude to more aggressive maneuvers.
The name of the game is revenue and growth. Losers will eat in a Waffle House. Winners will not.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2020
Cognitive Search: A Silver Bullet?
January 2, 2020
Search is a basic function that requires tinkering to make it intuitive and a useful tool for enterprise systems. In the past, most out of the box search solutions stink and require augmentations from the IT department to work. Enterprise search, however, has dramatically improved and that makes a slow news day for search experts. Most headlines based enterprise search include the latest buzz topics, like, “Significance Of Cognitive Search In The Enterprise” posted on Analytics Insight.
Cognitive search is apparently the newest thing. It is basically enterprise search injected with machine learning/artificial intelligence steroids. An undeniable truth is that enterprise systems are pulling their data across many systems, on site and in the cloud. A good search tool will crawl each dataset and return the most accurate results. Cognitive search uses AI to make search smarter aka “more cognitive,” which basically means the search tool learns from search queries, make search suggestions, and offer predictions. The official jargon sounds smarter:
“Cognitive search is associated with the concept of machine learning, where a computer system processes new insights and convert the way it reacts based on the newly gained data. By using the form of AI, it provides more in-depth search outcomes based on local information, previous search history and other variables. It also brings more specific results to an end-user as the cognitive system learns how an individual or system acts these searches.
This makes the cognitive search method a variable implementation into an enterprise’s network search capability.”
In other words, based off the latest technology craze enterprise search is going to become smarter and more intuitive for users! Blah, blah, semantic search, blah, blah, search engines, blah, blah, algorithms. It is the same “new and improved” spiel that comes every year.
Whitney Grace, January 2, 2020
Happy New Year, Security Buffs
January 1, 2020
DarkCyber spotted a write up which revealed an unpleasant (not inconvenient) truth. Navigate to “Complexity Is the Biggest Enemy for Cybersecurity Practitioner.” The idea is that security problems exist due to complexity. Here’s a passage that intrigued us:
If you look at all the breaches, whether they’re on cloud or on premise, you will find that those organizations had the technology, but they didn’t have a synchronized policy. So there has been a gap in the policy deployment because they have been using different tools with different policy engines and configurations or many features haven’t been turned on because existence of many tools creates so much complexity, which is the biggest enemy for any cybersecurity practitioner.
Over time, humans make things more complicated. A simple solution is often neither desirable or possible. Thus, gaps exist, opportunities for mischief abound, and organizations remain vulnerable in ways not understood or anticipated.
What’s the fix?
The expert opining in the article has an answer: “An API based approach.”
Complex?
Yeah, that’s the challenge the cybersecurity industry faces. Its simple solutions are too complex for many potential customers.
Net net: Become a cyber security consultant. The tyro will be wrong, but so will the experts.
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2019
Spies, Intelligence, and Publisher Motives
December 31, 2019
We are getting close to a new decade. This morning DarkCyber’s newsfeed contained two stories. These were different from the Year in Review and the What’s Ahead write ups that clog the info pipes as a year twists in the wind.
Even more interesting is the fact that the stories come from sources usually associated with recycled news releases and topics about innovations in look alike mobile phones, the antics of the Silicon Valley wizards, and gadgets rivaling the Popeil Pocket Fisherman in usefulness.
The first story is about Microsoft cracking down on a nation state which appears to have a desire to compromise US interests. “Microsoft Takes Down 50 Domains Operated by North Korean Hackers” states that:
Microsoft takes control of 50 domains operated by Thallium (APT37), a North Korean cyber-espionage group.
The write up added:
The domains were used to send phishing emails and host phishing pages. Thallium hackers would lure victims on these sites, steal their credentials, and then gain access to internal networks, from where they’d escalate their attacks even further.
DarkCyber finds this interesting. Specialist firms in the US and Israel pay attention to certain types of online activity. Now the outfit that brings the wonky Windows 10 updates and the hugely complex Azure cloud construct is taking action, with the blessing of a court. Prudent is Microsoft.
The second write up is “‘Shattered’: Inside the Secret Battle to Save America’s Undercover Spies in the Digital Age.” The write up appears to be the original work of Yahoo, a unit of Verizon. The article explains a breach and notes:
Whether the U.S. intelligence agencies will be able to make these radical changes is unclear, but without a fundamental transformation, officials warn, the nation faces an unprecedented crisis in its ability to collect human intelligence. While some believe that a return to tried and true tradecraft will be sufficient to protect undercover officers, others fear the business of human spying is in mortal peril and that the crisis will ultimately force the U.S. intelligence community to rethink its entire enterprise.
Note that the Yahoo original news story runs about 6,000 words. Buy a hot chocolate, grab a bagel, and chill as you work through the compilation of government efforts to deal with security, bad actors, bureaucratic procedures, and assorted dangers, clear, unclear, present, and missing in action. On the other hand, you can wait for the podcast because the write up seems to have some pot boiler characteristics woven through the “news.”
Read the original stories.
DarkCyber formulated several observations. Here they are:
- Will 2020 be the year of intelligence, cyber crime, and government missteps related to security?
- Why are ZDNet and Yahoo (both outfits with a history of wobbling from news release to news release) getting into what seems to be popularization of topics once ignored. Clicks? Ad dollars? Awards for journalism?
- What will stories like these trigger? One idea is that bad actors may become sufficiently unhappy to respond. Will these responses be a letter to the editor? Maybe. Maybe not. Unintended consequences may await.
This new interest of ZDNet and Yahoo may be a story in itself. Perhaps there is useful information tucked into the Yahoo Groups which Verizon will be removing from public access in a couple of weeks. And what about that Microsoft activity?
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2019
Open Source: A Good to Be Exploited?
December 25, 2019
Is Amazon Web Services taking undue advantage of open source software, or is it simply giving its users what they want (or perhaps both)? It seems to be a matter of perspective. ZDNet reports, “AWS Hits Back at Open-Source Software Critics: Claims that AWS is Strip-Mining Open-Source Software is ‘Silly and Off-Base,’ Says Exec.” The defense is in response to a piece (paywalled) in the New York Times in which open-source creators complained the company takes the liberty of freely integrating their work into its profitable platform. Writer Liam Tung specifies:
“According to the New York Times report, several rivals have discussed bringing antitrust complaints against AWS. Bloomberg reported this month that the Federal Trade Commission has asked software companies about AWS. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told the NYT that ‘people are afraid that Amazon’s ambitions are endless’. Cloudflare operates a large content distribution network, which competes with a subsection of AWS.”
We also learn that open-source firms are shifting their licensing terms in response to such cloudy business practices from IBM and others, as well as Amazon. MongoDB’s Server Side Public License is one example. Elastic, maker of Elasticsearch, has also placed limits on how cloud companies may use its software.
AWS VP Andi Gutmans, however, insists this is much ado about nothing. Tung quotes the executive:
“‘The [Times] story is largely talking about open source software projects and companies who’ve tried to build businesses around commercializing that open-source software. These open-source projects enable any company to utilize this software on-premises or in the cloud, and build services around it. AWS customers have repeatedly asked AWS to build managed services around open source,’ Gutmans said. He noted that AWS contributes to open-source projects such as Linux, Java, Kubernetes, Xen, KVM, Chromium, Robot Operating System, Apache Lucene, Redis, s2n, FreeRTOS and Elasticsearch.
“‘A number of maintainers of open-source projects build commercial companies around the open-source project. A small set of outliers see it as a zero-sum game and want to be the only ones able to freely monetize managed services around these open-source projects,’ he added.”
And the remediation process? Lawyers are standing by.
Cynthia Murrell, December 25, 2019
Do Four Peas Make a Useful Digital Pod?
December 24, 2019
The Four P’s of Information
This has the problem with data since at least the turn of this century—Forbes posts a “Reality Check: Still Spending More Time Gathering Instead of Analyzing.” Writer and Keeeb CTO Sid Probstein reminds us:
“Numerous studies of ‘knowledge worker’ productivity have shown that we spend too much time gathering information instead of analyzing it. In 2001, IDC published its venerable white paper, ‘The High Cost of Not Finding Information,’ noting that knowledge workers were spending two and a half hours a day searching for information. Since then, we have seen the rise of the cloud, ubiquitous computing, connectivity and everything else that was science fiction when we were kids becoming a reality — including the imminent emergence of AI. Yet in 2012, a decade after the IDC report, a study conducted by McKinsey found that knowledge workers still spend 19% of their time searching for and gathering information, and a 2018 IDC study found that ‘data professionals are losing 50% of their time every week’ — 30% searching for, governing and preparing data plus 20% duplicating work. Clearly, all the technology advances have not flipped the productivity paradigm; it seems like we still spend more time searching for information that exists rather than analyzing and creating new knowledge.”
Probstein believes much of the problem lies in data silos. There are four subsets of the data silo issue, we’re told, but most proposed solutions fail to address all of them. They are the “four P’s” of information: Public Data (info that is searchable across the World Wide Web), Private Data (information behind login pages or firewalls), Paid Data (like industry research, datasets, and professional information), and Personal Data (our own notes, bookmarks, and saved references). See the article for more about each of these areas. Bridging these silos remains a challenge for knowledge workers, but it seems businesses may be taking the issue more seriously. Will we soon be making better use of all that data? Do four peas make a pod? Not yet.
Cynthia Murrell, December 24, 2019
Microsoft Matches the Amazon AWS Security Certification
December 21, 2019
DarkCyber wants to point out that the JEDI deal has not closed. But one of Microsoft’s weaknesses has been remediated. The news is probably not going to make Amazon’s AWS government professionals smile. In fact, the news could ruin the New Year for the Bezos bulldozer.
Stars and Stripes explained in “With New Pentagon IT Certification, Microsoft Narrows the Cloud Security Gap with Amazon” that:
on December 12 Microsoft became the second company to hold the Pentagon’s highest-level IT security certification, called Impact Level 6, Defense Information Systems Agency spokesman Russ Goemaere told The Washington Post in an email. The temporary certification lasts three months, after which a longer one will be considered, Goemaere said. The news of Microsoft’s certification was reported earlier by the Washington Business Journal. The certification means that, for the first time, Microsoft will be able to store classified data in the cloud. Defense and intelligence agencies typically use air-gapped, local computer networks to store sensitive data rather than the cloud-based systems that most companies now use to harness far-off data centers. Previously, Amazon was the only cloud provider trusted with secret data.
The Grinch may want to contact Amazon customer service and ask for an explanation. DarkCyber is not sure if certification is the same as “real” security, but checklists matter. When billions are at stake, one small item can have significant impact. For more detail, see “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” The book is just $9.00 on Amazon. The 1957 book is classified as inspirational and religious poetry.
Yep, categories are important too.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2019
Google May Lose the Gaming Wars
December 20, 2019
Gaming used to be a cottage industry, but things have changed to the tune of billions of dollars and the existence of professional gamer as an occupation. Gamers have evolved into sophisticated consumers (arguably) and they are particular about what they play. The industry is dominated by Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Google wants a piece of the action. Slash Gear shares that, “Google Stadia’s Rocky Roll-Out Continues With Free Fame Refunds.”
Gamers are not embracing Google Stadia and reports are streaming in about negative experiences. Two of the Stadia’s first releases was Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition and Farming Simulator 19 for purchase, but then they were released for free with the Stadia Pro membership. Gamers were unhappy with that development and Stadia has offered refunds. New developments in gaming are always rocky:
“Teething problems for any new service, never mind one as ambitious as Stadia, are to be expected. Still, Google’s track record with its cloud gaming platform doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The company’s inability to keep its earliest-adopters happy is a testament to how not to successfully launch, and its handling of things like Stadia Pro titles also leaves much to be desired.”
Stadia is a great idea in theory, but execution is more complicated. Low latency gaming with HD graphics is not plausible with current technology, but as technology continues to improve it will be.
Reality and real people are different from demonstrations under controlled conditions. The real world includes humans, Microsoft Mixer, Amazon Twitch, and other non lab things.
Whitney Grace, December 20, 2019
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